What a day! New restructuring at my husband's work, the oven isn't working, the plumbers have been in and said our boiler pipe is rubbish ... and it's just gone noon.
But a moment of quiet in the midst of the storm now to remember my Canadian grandmother Gladys, who was born on this day over a hundred years ago. The love of her descendants for her should outlive her for at least forty more years, I hope--perhaps fifty.
It may seem odd to refer to the Song of Songs when contemplating one's grandmother. However, the Song of Songs is about love, and of all family and friends who have died, the one I loved best was Gladys. Perhaps because I saw her at least once a week until I moved away from Toronto, she was also the family member I knew best.
A not inconsiderable piece in the puzzle of my Christian hope is the chance of seeing my grandmother again. It also is, incidentally, the taproot of my affection for Protestants and the hope that despite error having no rights, etc., all will be well with them.
One should celebrate love with great gusto when one's loved ones are alive because the grief when they aren't doesn't entirely wear off. I burst into tears on Christmas Eve, thinking of my grandmother. I'm sure I'm not alone in that sort of thing.
My grandmother was a quote "unplanned pregnancy" unquote, and my great-grandmother left Scotland to have her quietly in Canada. Given my current publisher, that is important to mention although I'm afraid my grandmother would have hated that fact to be widely known. It was a scandal of unmentionable proportions 80 years ago, let alone 100 years ago, of course. She referred to her mother as "Auntie" until the day she died, and indeed when the rest of us have cause mention my great-grandmother, "Auntie" she remains. In the long roll call of family prayers, that name was wedged in between her daughter and me.
Anyway, whereas Auntie was a Modern Woman, a single woman who "adopted a child" out west before joining her family in Toronto, and embarking on a Career, Gladys was a cheerful mid-century housewife who sometimes worked behind the counter at the local "smoke shop" for pin money. She was a classic example of an Old Toronto person, the kind of woman who greeted, chatted with and then thanked bus drivers, and when people (including Anthony Bourdain) belittle that sort of mid-century Scottish-Canadian Torontonian, I go out of my mind with rage.
This is because I am rather more like my red-haired grandfather than like my placid grandmother, which is too bad, really. My grandfather had a temper, my mother had a temper, and now I have a temper. Instead my grandmother had Nerves, which I inherited, so I have both a temper AND Nerves--a dangerous combination. But I do not sit at the kitchen table, lost in my thoughts, smoking, however. Nor do I stay up all night reading trashy novels. ( Gladys: "They're not trashy. They're family sagas.")
One of my nephews once innocently remarked that when I am away in Scotland, it's as if I didn't exist. He was only seven or eight when he said that, so no hard feelings, although obviously it froze my soul. I'm sorry I can't be a steady, cheerful, cookie-bringing presence like my grandmother. However, I am very grateful that I had my grandmother so long, and that an enduring childhood memory is rushing to the sidewalk in front of our house on Sunday afternoons, to see if she was coming yet.
And there she would be, beret on head, high-heeled sandals on feet, vinyl shopping bag in hand, very happy to see her grandchildren running to meet her on the last leg of her walk from her house to our house.
Love is stronger than death.
Showing posts with label Nostalgia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nostalgia. Show all posts
Monday, 21 January 2019
Monday, 22 October 2018
Mirrors
Oh, for the days I blogged for others not for myself. Auntie Seraphic was a lot more cheerful and fun than Mrs McLean, we must admit. Probably more interesting, too. On Saturday evening I began reading a wonderful little book by the Venerable Fulton Sheen, and he said that the beginning of Inner Peace was not talking about yourself.
Let us meditate on that, but also on mirrors, for today I was thinking about the faces my mirrors have reflected. Not mine. My face I have taken with me to St. Benedict Over the Apple Tree, but alas the mirrors that have reflected more beautiful and younger faces I have had to leave behind.
Moving is one of the most stressful things you can do, but moving when you didn't want to move is even worse. Although my rational brain knows we didn't leave because of an invading army or natural disaster, my reptile brain doesn't seem to know that. Today I told myself it wasn't like the Highland Clearances until I realised that it was exactly like the Highland Clearnaces in that the wicked landlords had a legal right to shove the poor peasants off the land.
The poor Highlanders took what they could carry and watched the rest go up in flames. The poor McLeans are taking what will fit in their two-bedroom walk-up and slowly divesting themselves of everything else. Two pieces of furniture of which I am (despite becoming minimalist) still very fond are my 1930s vanity table and the ornate mirrored set of drawers on the landing, and neither of them will fit in S-BOAT, so I must say good-bye, not only to them but to the memories they evoke.
Both the vanity and the "hall table," as we imprecisely called the ornate, barley-twisted thing, remind me of wonderful dinner parties and weekends or full weeks with out-of-town guests. The hall table was one of the first things guests would see when they got to the top of the stone staircase. Men would put their hats and scarves on it, and the ones who cared checked their pomaded hair in the mirror. My mother and I, at 40-odd and 60-odd, once contemplated our ageing selves in it, and I saw my grandfather looking out from both of our faces, which was rather disconcerting.
The vanity table was useful for the ladies, usually pretty young ladies, staying in the best guest room. It was a rather feminine and dainty little room before the Deluge changed our lives, and now it has the porcelain wreckage of our destroyed bathroom strewn all over the now carpet-less floor. Sometimes, mid-dinner party, I would woozily reapply my lipstick behind the shut door, and hear the Bass (who has a heavy tread) tromp along the hall from the dining-room to whatever bottle awaited him in the sitting-room.
The Historical House is too well-kept to be a haunted house, and I hope and pray none of its occupants or guests are ever reduced to earth-bound spectres. However, it would be jolly if the noise of one of our dinner parties somehow soaked into the walls and oozed out again every once in awhile so that, were anyone standing at the bottom of the correct staircase at midnight, we would again be audible. Great bursts of guffaws and giggles would be optimal, but I would settle for the Bass's tromp-tromp-tromp to the sitting-room, which would scare the living daylights out of anyone at 10 PM at night in an empty manor house.
Another jolly haunting would be if the reflection of one (or all of) our pretty young guests popped out from the vanity table mirror once in awhile. Some poor student would be innocently gluing on her fake eyelashes when all of a sudden there Polish Pretend Daughter's face would be beside the student's face in the mirror. If you don't want to be this student, try not to buy a vanity table from and Edinburgh Bethany Shop in the next few months, that's what I advise.
And now I shall write about the excellence of chickens.
Let us meditate on that, but also on mirrors, for today I was thinking about the faces my mirrors have reflected. Not mine. My face I have taken with me to St. Benedict Over the Apple Tree, but alas the mirrors that have reflected more beautiful and younger faces I have had to leave behind.
Moving is one of the most stressful things you can do, but moving when you didn't want to move is even worse. Although my rational brain knows we didn't leave because of an invading army or natural disaster, my reptile brain doesn't seem to know that. Today I told myself it wasn't like the Highland Clearances until I realised that it was exactly like the Highland Clearnaces in that the wicked landlords had a legal right to shove the poor peasants off the land.
The poor Highlanders took what they could carry and watched the rest go up in flames. The poor McLeans are taking what will fit in their two-bedroom walk-up and slowly divesting themselves of everything else. Two pieces of furniture of which I am (despite becoming minimalist) still very fond are my 1930s vanity table and the ornate mirrored set of drawers on the landing, and neither of them will fit in S-BOAT, so I must say good-bye, not only to them but to the memories they evoke.
Both the vanity and the "hall table," as we imprecisely called the ornate, barley-twisted thing, remind me of wonderful dinner parties and weekends or full weeks with out-of-town guests. The hall table was one of the first things guests would see when they got to the top of the stone staircase. Men would put their hats and scarves on it, and the ones who cared checked their pomaded hair in the mirror. My mother and I, at 40-odd and 60-odd, once contemplated our ageing selves in it, and I saw my grandfather looking out from both of our faces, which was rather disconcerting.
The vanity table was useful for the ladies, usually pretty young ladies, staying in the best guest room. It was a rather feminine and dainty little room before the Deluge changed our lives, and now it has the porcelain wreckage of our destroyed bathroom strewn all over the now carpet-less floor. Sometimes, mid-dinner party, I would woozily reapply my lipstick behind the shut door, and hear the Bass (who has a heavy tread) tromp along the hall from the dining-room to whatever bottle awaited him in the sitting-room.
The Historical House is too well-kept to be a haunted house, and I hope and pray none of its occupants or guests are ever reduced to earth-bound spectres. However, it would be jolly if the noise of one of our dinner parties somehow soaked into the walls and oozed out again every once in awhile so that, were anyone standing at the bottom of the correct staircase at midnight, we would again be audible. Great bursts of guffaws and giggles would be optimal, but I would settle for the Bass's tromp-tromp-tromp to the sitting-room, which would scare the living daylights out of anyone at 10 PM at night in an empty manor house.
Another jolly haunting would be if the reflection of one (or all of) our pretty young guests popped out from the vanity table mirror once in awhile. Some poor student would be innocently gluing on her fake eyelashes when all of a sudden there Polish Pretend Daughter's face would be beside the student's face in the mirror. If you don't want to be this student, try not to buy a vanity table from and Edinburgh Bethany Shop in the next few months, that's what I advise.
And now I shall write about the excellence of chickens.
Monday, 8 October 2018
Canadian Thanksgiving
Today I was terribly sad and homesick, and it was through gritted teeth that I asked myself what I could do today to make tomorrow better. One thing I did was to acknowledge that I, like so many others, have an internet addiction and should strive not to get on the web before or after office hours.
But I also posted a letter to two nice Scottish girls immured in a French convent school and spent £17 on groceries, which I slowly began to turn into Thanksgiving supper. Originally I was going to have Thanksgiving supper on Sunday night with two English-Scottish couples, but one couple was out of town and the other's plans have to be made greatly in advance because of the need for a babysitter. I was going to invite another couple for real Thanksgiving, tonight, but I thought B.A. would be too tired from work. So in the end, I shopped for two.
The secret to Thanksgiving for two is to stick to the basics. If your spouse does not come from a Thanksgiving-celebrating culture, this is quite easy. You tell him what the basics are, and he accepts this as Canadian (or, I imagine, American) law. In our case, this meant a turkey leg, gravy, curried carrots with honey and ginger, and pumpkin pie with whipped cream. I also provided store-bought gnocchi as a fast take on potatoes.
I was quite surprised to find a turkey leg for sale among the poultry. I meant to buy guinea hens, but there being an enormous raw turkey leg, I bought it. I suppose it must once have been attached to a turkey crown, now sitting in the frozen foods department of some grocery store somewhere in the British Isles. Tesco has already starting stocking Christmas things. Hallowe'en is not strong enough a tradition hear to keep Christmas groceries at bay.
At any rate, I began to prepare Thanksgiving Dinner at 5 PM and it was ready at 8 PM, and it was eaten by 9 PM, with all the dishes washed and the leftovers sweetly stored in the fridge. I shall be delighted with my current self when my future self walks into a clean kitchen tomorrow morning.
Incidentally, I made my pumpkin pie crust with lard (not vegetable shortening), and it flaked beautifully. I used to be awful at making pastry, but now that I have been married for almost ten years, I am rather good at it. Like making friends, it takes time.
But I also posted a letter to two nice Scottish girls immured in a French convent school and spent £17 on groceries, which I slowly began to turn into Thanksgiving supper. Originally I was going to have Thanksgiving supper on Sunday night with two English-Scottish couples, but one couple was out of town and the other's plans have to be made greatly in advance because of the need for a babysitter. I was going to invite another couple for real Thanksgiving, tonight, but I thought B.A. would be too tired from work. So in the end, I shopped for two.
The secret to Thanksgiving for two is to stick to the basics. If your spouse does not come from a Thanksgiving-celebrating culture, this is quite easy. You tell him what the basics are, and he accepts this as Canadian (or, I imagine, American) law. In our case, this meant a turkey leg, gravy, curried carrots with honey and ginger, and pumpkin pie with whipped cream. I also provided store-bought gnocchi as a fast take on potatoes.
I was quite surprised to find a turkey leg for sale among the poultry. I meant to buy guinea hens, but there being an enormous raw turkey leg, I bought it. I suppose it must once have been attached to a turkey crown, now sitting in the frozen foods department of some grocery store somewhere in the British Isles. Tesco has already starting stocking Christmas things. Hallowe'en is not strong enough a tradition hear to keep Christmas groceries at bay.
At any rate, I began to prepare Thanksgiving Dinner at 5 PM and it was ready at 8 PM, and it was eaten by 9 PM, with all the dishes washed and the leftovers sweetly stored in the fridge. I shall be delighted with my current self when my future self walks into a clean kitchen tomorrow morning.
Incidentally, I made my pumpkin pie crust with lard (not vegetable shortening), and it flaked beautifully. I used to be awful at making pastry, but now that I have been married for almost ten years, I am rather good at it. Like making friends, it takes time.
Friday, 28 September 2018
Ten Years On
 |
| 2008 |
I did not know then that the nice fellow in the loud tweed jacket who had met me at the bus station the night before, taken me to a pub for a pie and ale and then hospitably whisked me off in a taxi cab to Pemberley a Georgian manor would become my husband.
But lo.
Tomorrow is the tenth anniversary of Benedict Ambrose's reception into the One Holy Catholic Apostolic Church, so we are having a little party of our co-religionists--trads to a man. It is also St. Michael's Day, so in honour of the great archangel I shall be preparing a great feast. And a priest is coming, so we'll have St. Benedict Over the Apple Tree blessed, too.
In terms of traditional Michaelmas foods, I am adapting rather than sticking to the ancient ways. First, it isn't easy to get a Michaelmas goose anymore, the goose breeders now primarily interested in the Christmas market. Second, geese cost an awful lot. Then the Michaelmas bannock, which is a kind of large scone wrapped in pancakes, does not sound that appetising.
Therefore, I am more-or-less making Thanksgiving dinner, only with more attention to apples.
Sunday, 2 September 2018
Diary Hoarder
Having revealed spousal and familial hoarding habits, I should admit that I cannot get rid of my diaries.
This may be unusual. Many women, upon finding a teenage diary, have a quick look, shudder and tear it to bits. And I do understand this impulse, as last week I found an excruciatingly not-to-be-sent letter I wrote to a young man I had had a crush on. Happily, it was clearly an attempt to write my way to sanity, but all the same I tore it up and divided the pieces between two trash bags.
But I would never rid myself of my teenage diaries, for I don't want to lose the funny, innocent girl who used to be me. For one thing, I took an oath as a child that I would never forget what being a child was like, and if you have your diaries--and I began my first at 7--it's harder to do that.
I actually do have a look at those diaries for time to time, for now that I have friends who are up to 20 years younger than me, I enjoy having a look to see what I was doing when they were born. In Polish Pretend Son's case, I was either at a dance, sleeping or writing about the dance. I keep forgetting to ask his Polish Authentic Mother about the exact hour.
But I have been tempted to burn all diaries written in the 1990s, for I never read those. When I mentioned this to my dear friend Trish, she said that would be very sad. And I think she is right, especially as they are my last link to the person I was--and the person Trish was--in the 1990s. In the 1990s we both struggled to become proper artists, to conquer depression and to find happiness. I found it very, very hard----another reason why I don't want to burn those diaries. It would be like drowning those young women in the middle of their desperate swim for unseen shores.
(Graduating from a Canadian university in the mid-1990s was like being shipwrecked. Discuss.)
Then there are the diaries of my three-year theological training, during which I was usually happy and life was both structured and interesting. A professor passed along a request from the Catholic Register to review a book, as she hadn't the time, and that is how my career in Catholic media began.
And there are even diaries from my time in an American PhD program, which I sometimes think I could turn into a novel, if I could summon up the courage to return deeply into the horrors. The one great problem with my wonderful faith-filled Canadian theologate was that it gave no preparation at all for the shark-infested sea that is (or was) American academic theology.
Finally there are diaries from my surprising new life in Scotland although the written records are rather patchy as by the time I met B.A. I had been blogging for two years and I have blogged ever since.
The physical result of all these diaries is four large boxes jammed with hardcover notebooks. Had I become part of some amazing literary circle they would hold some interest for future scholars, but so far I haven't,* so I strongly doubt it.
There is little of historical interest even in my teenage diaries, as I recorded very little of the worldwide events and cultural novelties around: an excited reference to the whole family getting a DVD player one Christmas, a colourful illustration of the outfit I wore to a dance, a haircut based on that of Veronique Beliveau, the casual description of Italian-Canadian slaves to teenage fashion, as "Ginos" and "Ginas".
That's rather embarrassing now, come to think of it.
I suppose it may interest some that there was a nostalgic 1960s revival in the 1980s and that bubble-dresses made a brief reappearance. (My mother made me one, and it was awesome.) It may even be of interest that there were still enough women religious working in the "reference library" of my all-girls high school that my then-best friend Tashie and I made up cruel nicknames for them all.
However, I suspect that this will be of interest only to me, and that my heirs will burn my diaries without a qualm--or even just shove them into trash bags, the horror.
*This is now an arguable point, however. Since I married I have become part of the Catholic traditionalist movement, and that does have some very well-known authors and journalists associated with it. It is hard to say, however, what kind of lasting influence any of us will have, and I myself am a very small potato. I might not even be a whole potato. I may be a single french fry--or a tater tot.
This may be unusual. Many women, upon finding a teenage diary, have a quick look, shudder and tear it to bits. And I do understand this impulse, as last week I found an excruciatingly not-to-be-sent letter I wrote to a young man I had had a crush on. Happily, it was clearly an attempt to write my way to sanity, but all the same I tore it up and divided the pieces between two trash bags.
But I would never rid myself of my teenage diaries, for I don't want to lose the funny, innocent girl who used to be me. For one thing, I took an oath as a child that I would never forget what being a child was like, and if you have your diaries--and I began my first at 7--it's harder to do that.
I actually do have a look at those diaries for time to time, for now that I have friends who are up to 20 years younger than me, I enjoy having a look to see what I was doing when they were born. In Polish Pretend Son's case, I was either at a dance, sleeping or writing about the dance. I keep forgetting to ask his Polish Authentic Mother about the exact hour.
But I have been tempted to burn all diaries written in the 1990s, for I never read those. When I mentioned this to my dear friend Trish, she said that would be very sad. And I think she is right, especially as they are my last link to the person I was--and the person Trish was--in the 1990s. In the 1990s we both struggled to become proper artists, to conquer depression and to find happiness. I found it very, very hard----another reason why I don't want to burn those diaries. It would be like drowning those young women in the middle of their desperate swim for unseen shores.
(Graduating from a Canadian university in the mid-1990s was like being shipwrecked. Discuss.)
Then there are the diaries of my three-year theological training, during which I was usually happy and life was both structured and interesting. A professor passed along a request from the Catholic Register to review a book, as she hadn't the time, and that is how my career in Catholic media began.
And there are even diaries from my time in an American PhD program, which I sometimes think I could turn into a novel, if I could summon up the courage to return deeply into the horrors. The one great problem with my wonderful faith-filled Canadian theologate was that it gave no preparation at all for the shark-infested sea that is (or was) American academic theology.
Finally there are diaries from my surprising new life in Scotland although the written records are rather patchy as by the time I met B.A. I had been blogging for two years and I have blogged ever since.
The physical result of all these diaries is four large boxes jammed with hardcover notebooks. Had I become part of some amazing literary circle they would hold some interest for future scholars, but so far I haven't,* so I strongly doubt it.
There is little of historical interest even in my teenage diaries, as I recorded very little of the worldwide events and cultural novelties around: an excited reference to the whole family getting a DVD player one Christmas, a colourful illustration of the outfit I wore to a dance, a haircut based on that of Veronique Beliveau, the casual description of Italian-Canadian slaves to teenage fashion, as "Ginos" and "Ginas".
That's rather embarrassing now, come to think of it.
I suppose it may interest some that there was a nostalgic 1960s revival in the 1980s and that bubble-dresses made a brief reappearance. (My mother made me one, and it was awesome.) It may even be of interest that there were still enough women religious working in the "reference library" of my all-girls high school that my then-best friend Tashie and I made up cruel nicknames for them all.
However, I suspect that this will be of interest only to me, and that my heirs will burn my diaries without a qualm--or even just shove them into trash bags, the horror.
*This is now an arguable point, however. Since I married I have become part of the Catholic traditionalist movement, and that does have some very well-known authors and journalists associated with it. It is hard to say, however, what kind of lasting influence any of us will have, and I myself am a very small potato. I might not even be a whole potato. I may be a single french fry--or a tater tot.
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